Migrants are put in dire detention camps after getting stuck in Libya while trying to reach Europe. Photo Credit: Reuters

Libya migrants: Emergency evacuation operation agreed

Article in the BBC

30 November, 2017

Rescuing these migrants from the hellhole they are in is indeed the first priority and the urgent operation is essential, despite its implementation being doubtful. However, Europe is taking advantage of the outrage to tighten another screw on its fortress policy by sending these migrants all back home. Europe still does not admit that their condition was created in the first place by a conjunction of European labour needs that attract migrants and European border policies that put them in an ever more precarious situation, driving them deep underground into the hands of smugglers, traffickers, recruiters and exploitative employers. As long as Europe does not open sufficient legal pathways to allow most migrants to enter its territory and respond to the labour demand from European employers at all skills levels, more people will be sucked into smuggling and trafficking rings and abused. If European leaders and policy makers were strategically planning mobility policies over the long term, they would see how much this is in Europe’s own interest.